Nocturne
by Liriel-eris
Summary: He had a thousand names and a thousand stories to tell. He had a way of making her forget her own name. He bent music and bent reality. But fairytales don't last forever. They can't and 'once upon a time'has a way of growing old. E/C


A/N: I wrote this for a competition, in a bit of a hurry, but i rather liked it so i thought i'd see what you guys think. This is a oneshot. E/C

Disclaimer: Leroux owns it, I'm just having fun. :-)

**Nocturne**

_On__ce upon a time…_

That was how she liked stories to begin. _Once upon a time_…it was nice. Simple and full of such _promise_. And though she was too old for promise now, well past her middle age, and well past dreams, it was something to look back on, at least.

Something crunched underfoot as the lady in black walked through the cold basement. It was dark except for the faint glow from the tallow candle clutched in her hand. She didn't really need it. If she closed her eyes she could picture the rooms flawlessly. The dripping wax stained one of the lace edges of her sleeve and left a trail on the dark floor behind her. A trail of breadcrumbs to find her way home.

She dared not look down on whatever it was that she had stepped on. Some relic of the past, no doubt, and she'd feel no better for looking.

It was chilly and quiet down there, with only the occasional drip of water somewhere in the darkness and the scuttle of rodents well out of sight to break the silence. And the voices, of course. Laughter and tears and such glorious _music_. The most glorious music in the world. All of which only she could hear. Perhaps it was because it was all in her mind. She always wore black on this day, the day he went where she could not yet follow, and she couldn't take the emptiness of the house they had made their own. In the stillness of the basement, she could pretend that time did not exist. Because down there, it never had.

She went there often. Now and then. Here and there, she'd slip out and slip in and sit on the cold floor. The beautiful Persian rugs had long since rotted away. She didn't dare look closer at the furniture, preferring to keep to her memory of the elegant pieces. No, it was much more preferable to sit and think and remember and hope to one day forget and hope that that day would never come.

Some edges even time couldn't dull.

The place was full of ghosts. If she listened hard enough she could hear the music still, washing over her, carrying her off. He had always pushed her further than she would have dared venture on her own, until her voice was like fine crystal, easily flowing over notes she hadn't even deemed possible. It was his obsession, and in a way, hers as well. The widow heard her own voice, young and unrestrained, soaring with his, twining in duets that felt as though the world was shattering all around.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let the past stir, if only for a moment, a moratorium of such lovely days and girlish fancies when time seemed to go on forever, and anything was possible. The memory was pink, golden and warm.

It those early days, when she had been just a slip of a girl, one among hundreds, blending and milling amongst the theatre employees. Back when she had dared indulge grand fantasies, when music was all that mattered. When she was a living part of its fabric, more connected with every note she sang. She closed her eyes, leaning against the damp wall.

She could still feel the warmth of the fire on her skin, as she sat obediently on the rug, eyes-like-the-sky glittering, young face spellbound. Sometimes he let her speak, mostly he preferred to do the telling. She had been enraptured, lost, eager and the Angel told her_ such_ tales.

What a strange pair they'd made. The slight girl in a blue summer dress and strange man in sombre black. She was Persephone and Sheherazade, and Blue-beard's wife all in one, and it was just a matter of time to see whose fate she'd live. But she wasn't frightened, because just then it didn't matter.

Down there, in the basement where time seemed to stand still, she would forget even her own name. His voice was almost a living thing, and looking into the mists rising off the underground lake, she could believe anything he told her.

The stories _he _told were never kind, and they didn't start with '_Once upon a time'_. She'd asked him about it once, in an unguarded moment between one second and the next. What did it matter, she'd said, stories were stories, and she would much rather hear the happy ones. Oh, how he'd laughed. Cynicism, malice and mockery coloured his mirth. Like brittle edges of glass.

"But stories aren't there to make you feel better, my _sweet_." he'd drawled. "Oh no, never that. They are always brutal. They are warnings and truths and clever little lies."

His words were distressing, though she could not explain why. How little she'd understood, in all those golden hours (no, not golden, but _red_ and _brown _and _blue_ a dizzying kaleidoscope like the rug she would sit on). In a glass, darkly she'd seen him, shadows and edges and fragile little flashes of light. Immaculate, forbidding and frightening.

_Never make a god of a man_, she had once over heard a dancer whisper backstage to a despondent friend. She'd done one better. She'd made him a Ghost. And it took her years to see that it was all her imagination, even if _he_ liked to think otherwise.

One cannot remain a child forever. It was, predictably, the music that got her in the end. Just like dear papa. At the time they said it was consumption that had shortened the life of the brilliant violinist, but his daughter knew better. It was the music, too strong for his fragile mortal body. It burned through him, bright, fierce, swift. It had consumed him. And in a way the music had consumed her, also. The angel of music, an unquestioned enigma, taught her to sing in the night. As she grew older she knew he couldn't really be an angel, though she never admitted it, even to herself. So she let the lessons continue, and accepted the music he wrote her.

She could never get the Angel's score, which he had _written_ for _her_, out of her head. And oh! How she had tried! But it was there, always there, lingering on the fringes, mocking, creeping. It both thrilled and frightened her.

One day, she met the viscount again. Her old childhood playmate, who had grown tall and handsome and didn't frighten her in the least. The Angel always gave her roses so red they were all but black. Her viscount brought her daisies and tiger lilies. It was so easy to love him!

The viscount's bright eyes could chase away the clouds, but never the music, because the music was always in her.

"Marry me! Just think how happy we shall be! How happy…" The golden haired young man laughed. His face was still childlike, his eyes were bright. Dried flowers flashed before her eyes, pressed in the pages of her journal. It brought strange feelings to mind. She shuddered.

They were on yet another secret rendezvous (secret, because_ he_ had forbidden it) on the roof on the opera, standing in the shade of a tall, gilded statue. The sun was setting in pinks and purples, the summer wind was warm in her hair, and her shawl fluttered softly.

"I cannot…" She began in a faint whisper, knowing all the while that she could, and she _would_… He was her oldest friend, her childhood sweetheart. Whenever she looked into his smooth face her heart warmed with wonderful memories of when they had been children. For brief little moments, she would let herself think of those long-ago days, when there had been nothing to be frightened of. She smiled wistfully, remembering the way they would both giggle when he took her hand.

Her days with him were filled with flowers and candies and strolls in the park, and rides in his lovely carriage. They held hands and laughed, and talked of the wonderful life they would lead. It was so easy then to forget the Voice in the mirror which taught her to sing and demanded her soul in ransom. So she said yes to the proposal and tried not to glow with secret joy.

That night she sat on the thick Persian rug as she had done for years and years. His yellow eyes behind the satin mask were flinty. When he wasn't looking she pulled out the ring on a chain around her neck, and watched it glitter in the candlelight. It looked like costume jewellery in the light of the fifth basement. Frowning, she tucked it back into the bodice of her dress and smoothed her skirts, suddenly feeling restless.

He had another story to tell tonight, sitting well away from her. Always carefully not touching. The rose and the nightingale. He'd learned it on his travels abroad, and was very fond of it. It was about beauty, love, death and blood. She tried to ignore the meaning shining in the gold of his eyes. Instead she watched the lake.

He had told her there was a siren in the misty water. It was one of the unkind stories he'd told her. There, he'd hissed. _There_, under the mist she waits, long pale fingers hard as bone and cold as the grave. _There! _Waiting to pull you down, until there is no breath left in you.

For the first time she wondered if the siren was under the boat or _in_ it. And she wondered what he'd say when he saw the ring. And she wondered why she'd told the viscount that she hated _him_.

"My dear. You are not listening. Why is that?" His voice was gentle, almost cloyingly so, and it was by her ear though he hadn't moved an inch. She hated it when he threw his voice, finding it unsettling.

"I…"

"And what a strange smile you try not to wear." He continued, more strained now, his eyes strangely flat "Is it the story? But no. I do not think it is. Unless my darling finds pleasure in tragedy? What could it be then? Hmm?"

She lied through her teeth and for some reason he let it go, reminding her of her oath of loyalty to him and him alone. It was by far the worst thing he could have done.

***

_He_ had all sorts of names for himself. Demon, and monster, and Angel (although that last was of her own choosing). He asked had for none of them and held to each as though it was the key to defining who he was. For a time, the longest time, they were the key for her, too. It's odd how it takes a tragedy to open the eyes, she would reflect in the later years.

_The doctrine of affections_, he had been mocking her. He'd told her all about it, yellow eyes glowing as though they would weld her to the spot.

"Musical philosophy." Here he laughed at the very idea, _philosophy_ indeed! "The power of music to bend emotions. To bend and shape and change." He scanned her pale face, "Do you understand, dove? To _shape_. To_ bend._ To twist till there is nothing left."

"Yes, Angel," she'd whispered, she still addressed him as such, for lack of a better title, perhaps.

"Ha! No…no, I don't think that you do. What a terrible liar you are. Beautiful, but entirely unconvincing. No, indeed you do not. How can you? But you will. In time, you will."

The finality in his voice would have riled her, had she not been busy trying to puzzle out what he'd meant.

***

He idealised her, though she had no way of knowing that he did. Teeth like pearls and hair like the sun. He gave her a voice, and awoke the soul that had withered the day her father died. And they had years and years to learn. He taught her acceptance, and she taught him that reality was better and worse than ideals in the mind.

Barely married and she had the audacity to re-arrange the furniture.

"You are meddling. But what a pretty little meddler you are." His vice was all around her, faintly menacing, as he took in what she had done. She surprised them both by laughing. In less than a year she made him move out of the basement.

***

With a fond smile, the widow thought back on that day. It was fashionable suddenly for ladies to write biographies. She tried to compose hers in her head, wishing she could share the joke with the only other person who would understand it.

_Once upon a time_… but no! That surely wouldn't do.

…_The first time I heard his voice, I was but a child. My head filled with fairy stories and poetry my father would tell before he passed. With the strains of violin and the scent of tobacco which clung to him when he smoked his pipe. He tried so hard to cushion the world for me that upon his death he became a sort of myth, also. And it certainly wasn't difficult to assign divine identity to angelic voices in the night. So I called him the Angel of Music, confident that father had sent him. When he took me down to his house by the lake I was no less awed. My hands wringing the trailing hem of my night-coat, which hid my muslin nightgown from his piercing eyes, but did little in the way of stemming of the chill of the basement…_ It all sounded too much like a Gothic romance, and the very idea made her chuckle. Her voice was hoarse.

Perhaps one day a friend would tell the story, the bits and pieces that they knew, but far be it for her to take up the pen.

Brushing herself off, she got up off the floor, her skirts rustling around her. She ran a gloved hand gently along one wall, bidding a poignant farewell to the house by the lake and all it stood for. With a final glance around what she could see of the room, she knew that she probably wouldn't be back there again. She'd had such thoughts before, long ago, though the circumstances had been different then…

The young ingénue had been practising her future married name in her head all morning before the performance. It was a game, and a dangerous one. She had taken to signing her little notes to the viscount as such, and should _he_ ever find out… and how easily _he_ made her forget her own name…but it wouldn't matter soon. Just one more night and she would be free. Then she need never return to the theatre again. Nor to the strange darkness beneath. Clenching her lace-gloved hands she regarded herself in the mirror.

"My name is Chri…" And then she knew. And was terrified.

The plan hadn't gone over smoothly at all. He'd stolen her, and the viscount had followed in some silly misguided attempt to rescue her. He'd threatened, and wept (she'd never seen him weep before and it was heartrending.) He would blow up the theatre if she did not choose him, and she was in shock, her own mind racing at dizzying speeds. Her pale hair had come undone, wild around her stark face. She noted absently that the pins and ribbons much have fallen out at some point. The line of_ his_ shoulders didn't seem right when he turned to face her rescuer. His shoulders shook. She made herself watch him.

Two things she knew for sure, as her own tears streamed down her cheeks, her stage makeup making unsightly smears on her skin. Her pretty dress was torn, and she hadn't bothered to change as he had told her she must.

The air seemed to crackle with violence that could not be suppressed for much longer as the viscount and the Ghost faced each other. She could almost smell the metallic tang of blood.

Two things she knew for sure. The first was that the viscount was likely going to die. It was her fault that he was down there at all, and she had to find a way to _save _him. There was enough blood shed already, and she could not bear for his to be spilled.

The second was that she was beginning to question her own decision, and how was she to voice it? _Erik_…that was _his_ name. _Erik_ was shouting about gun powder, choices and explosions, and she thought of sunshine and strolls in the park, now impassively watching the young viscount plead for her. The gold band _Erik_ had placed on her finger was glinting through the tears that went on flowing though she felt suddenly detached.

So she said she would stay with _Erik_. He thought it was a sacrifice to save her beloved. She thought it was so like him to think that. But he was _wrong_, of course. She decided to stay because she found that she loved him, despite the obvious loathing she ought to feel. There would be plenty of time to reflect on her feelings later, so she didn't try to justify them to herself. And she wasn't pleased when he changed his mind and made her leave with her young beau, asking only that she return the ring when he died. The desolation in his eyes struck her dumb. Her heart pounded, and her mind raced and she couldn't think straight. The viscount pulled her along before she'd registered that they were moving.

The cold air outside the theatre hit her stained face, catching the young singer at unawares and she gasped in the air as deeply as her stays would allow. The young man who could not be hers pulled at her hand, babbling about elopements. Clarity hit the bewildered girl as abruptly as the icy wind, and a strange fury seemed to command her. The most important choice of her life had just been made without anyone so much as asking her, wrenched right out of her hands. And she was tired of keeping to her passive silence. The little singer turned to face her old friend.

***

She didn't marry her pretty viscount that night. Or any other. It would have been one masquerade too many, and she could never be so cruel. To either of them.

Instead, she went back underground. Her footsteps were perfectly silent as she traversed the underground maze. This wasn't about ghosts or angels any longer. This was about people and lives, acceptance and forgiveness.

He was all alone in the dark. He was holding a white ribbon that she had worn earlier that night, thought she did not see it until later, until the candles were re-lit. She knew he was there because she had seen the flicker of yellow-gold in the pitch of the darkness.

"This time," She began, fighting to keep her voice steady, "this time, I will tell the story. _Erik_."

Fin.

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